I have been answering Quora questions on what should be taught at schools, and reflected on that sometimes annoying habit of Facebook reminding you of what you did four years ago. I had posted about the children's books Michael Ende's 'Momo' and Salman Rushdie's 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' and how they should be reflected in our schooling, as we construct ourselves through stories... But alone, or even as a member of an audience, I am flooded with the anger and bereavement of the death of our humanity and how it is so often ignored or even made into a product by our cultural producers and commentators. I have decided no longer to use the label artist. I reserve that for what I saw on BBC TV's 'Civilisations' as, at the beginning, Simon Schama, historian, pays tribute to the Khaled al-Asaad, 82, the archaeologist beheaded publicly for refusing to tell ISIS where the had hidden the artefacts of Plamyra, Syria. Schama calls us the 'art makers', and this is one of the founding values of the series.

If, we, you and I, are human beings, and human beings are 'art makers', then how do our schools, and even our art galleries and patrons, and commentators ,portray artists as if we are one of the them? By the worship of the commercial artist do we disconnect ourselves from creativity and become the market, the consumers of art, paying for this elite cultural group. If so what happens to our creativity, our humanity? 

I am about to watch episode 9, The Vital Spark , which starts with the Jewish children of  Theresienstadt concentration camp and their art teacher, Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis, Simon Schama comments on the children's drawings, paintings as art.  So how should we respond to this TV series? Do we see the art and artefacts of civilisations as objects of study and reverence, which a national curriculum and an exam system can ensure our children learn about, or do see, like Dr Arthur Brock in WW1, who treated Wilfred Owen, schools as the place to grow our humanity through creative expression in a local historical and cultural context but in relationship to the rest of the world.

In reading Owen's poem about the inhumanity of war, Dulce et Decorum Est, lets remember Dr Brocks therapy and his call for all schools to humanise us, us as 'art makers'.